Denisovan hybrid cave yields four more hominin bones

A tiny bone fragment recovered from Denisova Cave in Siberia caused a big stir last month, after scientists showed that it belonged to an ancient-human hybrid they named Denny, who had a Neanderthal mother and Denisovan father1.

Now, the researchers who uncovered Denny’s remains have discovered four more hominin bones from the same cave.

These discoveries are part of an effort to identify early hominins by combing through thousands of unidentified pieces of animal bone, many of which have been left to gather dust in warehouses belonging to museums and research institutes.

“We get very, very excited” when a new hominin bone is discovered, says Samantha Brown, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH) in Jena, Germany.